


A Flame Once Lit

by Mithrigil



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls I
Genre: Conception, Corruption, Crueltide, Dendrophilia, Dubious Morality, Other, Sex Magic, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-09 16:32:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8899555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: On an errand for his liege, Artorias seeks the Witch's aid. Instead, he aids her on an errand of her own.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fells/gifts).



The Will of a King persists beyond death, for Will has no opposite.

In a world defined by its disparities, and in which those disparities define themselves, few things are absolute. For Light and Dark, Life and Immortality, Bravery and Apathy exist in collusion and collision: they are not balanced, for balance is stasis, and progress is inevitable. Be it degradation or achievement, one has changed, or been changed. Change is, thus, a rare absolute, and Will the instigator of Change.

\- * -

Each time Knight Artorias returns to Anor Londo, the same sight greets him: the city with its towers, its sun arisen in glory, the few clouds bowed in deference to its heavenly route. He alights on Ornstein’s spire, Sif bounding up beside him, then swings down to the balcony, already kneeling. Sif takes the cue and bows as well, nose to the floor.

“Captain,” he proclaims, “you have called, and I answer.”

“Knight Artorias,” Ornstein begins, leaning on his tall spear, “only for a need truly dire would I take you from your errands, and this is need is such. The coming threat is great, and Lord Gwyn in seeking to match it, but need not act alone. For too long has he been without his sister in arms, the Witch of Izalith. Perhaps she has found success and power in her absence, or perhaps your aid will be timely and she shall find herself in our Lord’s debt. Or perhaps she has failed, and the threat to our Sunlight has spread farther than we knew. Lord Gwyn wills that thou seek the Witch and her acolytes, her daughters, for surely they too dread the coming darkness.”

Artorias makes his obeisance known, and stands, shouldering his sword. “Has thou then seen our Liege?”

“He calls through his child, who reads His Light reflected in the mysteries of the moon.”

Artorias finds that acceptable, despite the edge of weariness in Ornstein’s tone. “Convey then to him that it shall be done.”

With a last bow, he leads Sif from the chamber, and leaves Ornstein to the captaincy.

Sif rumbles concern or confusion, and Artorias reaches a hand down to pat the wolf consolingly between the ears. “Come, now. Is it not better that we keep to the road, and our adventures?”

\- * -

Only once before has Artorias been to the Domain of Izalith; his travels tend not to take him where the rule of law is well in hand, and the Witch has ever been known for her wisdom and bounteous spirit. When last Artorias walked these roads, the citadel was green and glittering with life. Courtyards boasted trees taller than the domiciles carved into the stone, and the strange small congregants--humans, Artorias later learned--were thankful for the Witch’s generosity. They, and the trees, and many of Artorias’s kin, thrived here even without the sun. Firelight was sufficient to them, and so their pallor was paler and their shadows deeper, but it did not diminish their radiant beauty, and the same was true of the architecture. Grand domes and archways were erected for the coven and their acolytes, stunning stone braziers lining the roads walked by giants seeking enlightenment, literal and otherwise. Many a temple was carved into the bedrock of the earth itself, the stagnant grey of the dragons whittled like one of Gough’s trinkets into an intricate tribute to the Witch’s industry. And fruit that, like its farmers, needed not the sun, would grow in orchards as rich as the layer of earth that bore them. Along the deep roads, Artorias tells Sif of these trees, not so high as those in Sif’s beloved forest but wide and warm and canopied. Sif bounds along, wary but intrigued.

Strange, Artorias thinks, that none have come out to greet him. The denizens of the deep were never particularly numerous, not since the Age of Dragons (as now they call it), but nary a soul has come forth from Izalith’s gates. The silence is forbidding, tangible. At a swift gesture of his hand Sif trots ahead, and Artorias unsheathes his sword.

“Ho there,” Artorias calls, and a rattling echo is all that greets him.

The road is not so well-maintained as it was in years past, but that can be forgiven. After all, there is a war aboveground, and the matter of paving stones is inconsequential in comparison. The moss that grows between them snaps beneath Artorias’s solleret, a snipping contrast to the scrape of plate. It was springy, once. Or perhaps that was a different growth entirely.

Perched where the road meets the skyline, Sif lets out a low, warning growl. Beneath the wolf, a gorge, obsidian and bleak, so like the primordial darkness that Artorias barely remembers.

There was a river here. There still should be, and yet, is not. 

Artorias’s heart pounds in his chest, heavier yet faster, spurred by urgency. He bounds from cliff to cliff, from the broken arch of a white stone column charred black by some great fire to the scorched earth beneath. So war has come to Izalith, and with it devastation.

All that heartens Artorias is that the trees persist. They are wild, untended, yet their roots upend the stone with perpetual strength. He looks upon them, and Sif settles beside a root as thick as Artorias’s chest, scrapes at the dirt beneath it with deft forepaws. It’s fresh, as rich as once it was. It teems with life. Wherever the survivors are, the Witch must be among them.

Many hours Artorias and Sif spend in the abandoned city, tracing the roots to where they grow thickest. The orchard bears fruit still, though a pulp of it lays fetid on the ground, and Sif will not tread there. But the roots there have grown so thick as to be impassible, and the wall of bark and branches pulses, living, under Artorias’s touch.

His armor grows hot, and Artorias backs away. There is more than sorcery at the root of this, he is deathly certain.

The roots gather thickest where the heat runs strong, and there is radiance beyond them though no braziers are lit. Sif burrows beneath an aggressive outcropping, and then wails: the pitiful sound reverberates as Sif claws and scrambles for a foothold where there is none, and the steep stone pulls the wolf down into the earth.

Artorias bellows, “No!” and charges after his friend, slashing his sword through the wood. It lodges, and Artorias’s speed turns from strength to weakness as he overbalances and slides, unarmed but for his shield, into the depths.

What awaits him, when he falls headfirst, is a horror the likes of which he has not yet faced. Worse than the horror is the beauty of it: the heart of the tree is sprawling and grand, spiderlike branches winding quick and alive from a knotted trunk. But they are so _quick_ , quicker than even Artorias, as they sweep across the stone center and climb the walls, sealing the way out.

Sif, limping, staggers to Artorias’s side with blood dripping from every bared tooth. Valiant as his friend is, Artorias knows that Sif should not fight in this state. And the decision is made for him when a bough lashes out toward them both, and Artorias braces his shield before Sif, not himself.

Vines wind around him, stronger than armor, stronger than stone. He shouts to Sif to take cover as he is dragged clamoring and groaning, from his friend, from his shield, into the maw of the unholy tree.

Sif’s howl surges, pure pain, and is cut off with all other sound as the earth itself swallows Artorias down.

\- * -

Strange, that beneath Izalith there is still light to see by. Or perhaps, not so strange, Artorias thinks, dazed by the strange fumes and spores in this dense air: after all, the First Flame itself arose in the depths, beneath the scales of the surface.

He struggles, but is bound surely at the waist, the neck, one leg and both wrists. The vines are both within and without his armor: one rough branch abrades his skin through a rip in his arming doublet, another slides snakelike into his boot. With no purchase, his struggles are in vain, though damned if he does not struggle against this frightful intrusion. The vines are warm, as hot as Ciaran’s flesh caressing him but wrong, truly wrong.

He should not have thought of Ciaran: the image of her, here, bound as he is, makes cold fury rise in Artorias’s chest.

New roots grow, plunge out of hot cracks in the earth and rise to the level of Artorias’s eyes. That they know where to look, beyond the false visage of his helmet, is disconcerting in the extreme.

“Release me,” Artorias commands.

The tips of the vines lance out like the blades of scythes, crossed beneath Artorias’s throat. He is still armored there, so he is not afraid, but the threat is implicit, and he tilts down his chin in defiance.

“Are you the scourge that has befallen Izalith?”

The vines around him laugh. That is the only way to describe it: they pulse, and their warmth increases, and the sound is like a gasp still caught in a throat, distressingly sentient.

_You could say that,_ a voice whispers within him. _It would not be untrue._

“Where is the Witch?” Artorias breathes deep, chest swelling around the new tightness of his plate. How many branches have grown against him? How long before it suffocates him in his armor? “Where are her daughters? Where is her Covenant?”

_Not lost,_ the voice says.

Leaves whisper against his skin, then wither and crunch and die. Their ashes shift and rattle within his breastplate and collar, gather in the crooks of his elbows. The scythes before him twist, frame his face, and their flames lick his skin but do not consume him.

_The daughters are bound to me,_ it says. _They serve me, as will you._

“Never,” Artorias says. It is the easiest thing in the world. “I serve the Light. I serve Lord Gwyn. Whatever hellish Covenant you lead, it is not mine.”

_Then the choice is put before you, Knight Artorias: die here and nourish this place; or serve once, with all that you have, and be set free to bear your message and save your companion._

Had the voice not bade him remember Sif, Artorias might have sacrificed himself on the spot. The intimate twining of the vines within his armor makes the nature of this creature’s request immediately clear; already the hinges of his breastplate give, and already the vine at his waist grows bold with his groin.

He has done worse than this. Hasn’t he?

As if it sense his deliberation, the scythe-vines before him part like an eggshell, revealing a cavern of low firelight. _Your death will not be quick, but I have seen far nobler a passing for you in the flame. Should you choose to die here, I guarantee you pain. But this joining can be as quick and as gentle as you wish, and posterity will thank you._

Be it the spores in the air, or the withering reservations in his heart, Artorias lacks the words to tell the creature yes.

But he hears Sif’s wounded whimper through the chapped stones above him, and cannot say no either.

Taking that for consent, the vines drag him forward, the tips of his solleret scraping fissures in the ground. His breastplate bends and the hinges at his shoulder _snap_ , and a thin cut blights his chest, too near his throat. A branch laps up the blood, as if in apology. Further fragments of his armor clatter to the dirt behind him, a bracer, a greave, the seal that protected his neck. The abomination takes no care with it, nor with the leather and cloth and chain and padding. It does not want him nude, just bared toward its fiendish end, and soon Artorias hangs, half-bare, while rough bark scrapes his most intimate flesh.

_He must enjoy it,_ the voice commands, and the bright golden scythes go to work on Artorias’s skin. _He must attain, to share his power. No dormant seed this,_ it laughs, _so be attentive, my daughters. Rouse him for me. Rouse him for us all._

Spores drift like snowflakes before his visor, creep into the grate of his helmet. One bright vine pries it apart by the hinges and bares Artorias’s face, and he cannot help but gasp. But with his mouth open, unprotected, another branch is waiting and cups his jaw like a horse’s bit. It tastes of dirt and childhood, of the smoke curling around slow-cooked meat. His teeth scrape a layer of fresh wick beneath the bark, green and pungent. Artorias, resolutely, does not gag. And cannot struggle.

The branches multiply and suffuse him, cage him, bend him like a toy. Brambles affix his knees apart, stroke him behind his sac and bud inside him. If this had been someone he wanted, Artorias could focus on the pleasure it induces, on the strange heat of his no-longer-quiescent cock: like this, he is encompassed, milked for every scrap of good and service by an entity that needs him at his all. He could mark the strange gentleness of his captor; for all the roughness of the bark, it handles him like a cherished, fragile thing, and Artorias has never thought himself fragile. Had he given this freely, he could call it good. But when the branch intruding on his dry crevice _blooms_ , and fills him, in a place he has felt pleasure at his fellow Knights’ touch, he feels only heat, and heat alone is not pleasure.

Filled and stretched at the mouth and the ass, engulfed at the hands and feet and cock, Artorias cannot even fuck the creature back. The tree dictates the speed, the angle, the permission to breathe. Hot sweet sap drips into his mouth and scalds his tongue. The voice in his mind makes incantations he cannot follow, a disparate rhythm to the thrusting vines within him. Fire glows beneath the wood, beneath Artorias’s skin, threatens to burst forth if only given leave.

_Want this,_ the voice commands.

Artorias cannot.

_The joining must be complete,_ it says. _This will all be for naught if you do not give yourself to me. What is wrong, Knight Artorias? Can you not feel pleasure on its own behalf? Can you not rejoice in the life that grows within you? You, who value even the souls of the weak, who claim to serve so righteous a liege though he has abandoned you--you, with all your stubborn loyalty, cannot live for your own sake?_

With no leave to speak, Artorias can only answer in images: of Anor Londo at its peak, of Gwyn in his magnificence, of the Knights and Sif and the thriving giants and the sun at its zenith. He says, without saying: _I live only for others._

_Then you do not live,_ the creature says, and laughs within him. _Fear not, Knight Artorias. I will make you._

No more can this encounter pretend to gentleness. The tree fucks him with abandon, blossoming in the fall of Artorias’s blood and sweat. Berries flower and burst in his mouth and swell between his legs, and their ichor seeps into his skin, streaking his armor like ash. The spore-scent fades, with these bursts of cloying sweetness, and the vine around Artorias’s throat tightens until he sees, hears, and smells only red.

_It may take you close to death,_ that traitorous, brutal voice whispers, a feeling more than a sound, _but that will be proof that you were alive._

Reduced to the instincts of thrashing and fucking, he is Artorias no longer. In the twining arms of this horror, he is no Knight, no champion, no god. He is a mortal being, clinging to his soul with slipping fingers, desperate only to avert the unknown darkness. He is determination, instinct, primeval aspiration.

He comes, choking and screaming. It is endless, and painful, and flows forth from him without surcease. The tree drinks him, groaning and twining, and churns as if to crush him or chew him, but Artorias cannot care and cannot comprehend. This is ecstasy, fulfilling his basest function, his basest urge. His seed burns, but he is not burnt by it, and the creature swells and sprawls, funneling the semen into lava.

The child that results is no god. But Artorias, his end of the bargain fulfilled, does not have to hear its boiling cry.

\- * -

Sif snuffles him awake. The wolf’s wet nose nudges Artorias’s cheek, over and over, until he staggers groaning to his hands and knees. He is no longer beneath the earth: the floor is carved stone, threaded with leaves and small roots, but smooth and cool. His armor is in pieces, but his helmet has been returned to him, and after embracing Sif a long time he fastens it on, feeling raw without it.

Roots have grown to cover the steep hill down which they fell, and with a little effort Artorias and Sif climb back to the surface. Immersing himself in the moment, in the crucialness of escape, helps divert his mind from whatever else he experienced. At the surface, Izalith glows, warmer than it was. Perhaps he did good here, he thinks, strangely traitorous: perhaps that torment was for someone’s betterment. For all that the city pulses with new life, the thought leaves a chalky taste in Artorias’s mouth.

He pries his sword from the bough that stole it. Sif whimpers, and once he has sheathed the sword he buries his hand in Sif’s fur.

“Come now,” he says, as much to himself as his companion. “We know what befell the Witch. We are done here.”

Crossing out of the city is much the same as crossing in, until they come to that gorge. Where once the riverbed was dry, it is now _molten_ : lava flows, inexorable, from the husk of a giant, its sores boiling out where its right arm should be in tendrils of living fire. It has eight starry eyes, like an arachnid, and a mouth affixed in a permanent infant’s scream.

_Yes,_ says the voice in Artorias’s head, the smug whisper of the Witch. _You have done great things here. What better proof than this is there, Knight Artorias, that you are alive?_

\- * -

He tells Ornstein only that the Witch is changed, and massing an army of demons. The rest is left to time, and Lord Gwyn. Artorias will not return to Izalith.

\- * -


End file.
